As everyone knows, The Hunger Games comes to the theaters today (well, technically at 12:01 this morning) and it’s almost all anyone can talk about. I can’t blame the world, I’m right up there with everyone else and right after work I will in line with the masses to partake in this pop-culture phenomenon. As regular readers of The Warwick’s Blog know I have a slight penchant for dystopic stories. Well, maybe more than slight. I tend to devote a lot of blog and recommendation time to this genre, so recently I have made a concerted effort to specifically mention many of the non-genre books I read that are equally as fantastic and close to my heart. Because of this attempt to diversify my review writing I have mistakenly let a really captivating and rather innovative book go by the wayside. So, in honor of The Hunger Games movie release, I am courteously and briefly going to suck readers back into my obsession with post-apocalyptic/dystopic fiction.
Pure by Julianna Baggott has been available for the past couple of months, and thanks to my misguided attempts to diversify, has gone largely unnoticed here in the Warwick’s Young Adult section. Pure is yet another of those post-apocalyptic books where society has been split apart by war (in this book, the Detonations), with some members of the population secluded within a rigidly controlled, sterile environment and others, outside, starving in what remains of a world that no longer really exists. While this is not an unfamiliar premise in the least, what sets apart Pure from the other novels of similar vein is fusing. Those who live on the outside under an autocratic rule, with little food, and much fear are fused; meaning that during the Detonations (nuclear strikes), some were horribly scarred and disfigured, and others became fused with the environment surrounding them. Mothers became fused with their children—children who are never capable of physically growing, forever tied to their mothers arms, one boy has a flock of birds fused to his back, another is forever fused with the desert floor to become a monster of the worst and most frightening proportions, and our heroine, Pressia has a hand fused to a baby doll—its blinking eyes forever attached to what was once a hand. It is only those within the domed autocratic society that are unmaimed, or rather, “pure”. When Partridge, a pure with the highest of lineages, escapes the confines of the domed society in an effort to find the truth of his brother’s suicide and his father’s machinations, he discovers Pressia and her world of survivors. It is there that the two, along with an unlikely band of fused, uncover a plot and connections between Partridge and Pressia that take them all into a danger beyond their wildest imaginings.
What seems at first glance to be an absurd plot with a concept that could easily become cheesy and idiotic, is in actuality a brilliant use of imagination. The fusing is described in such a way that it actually makes sense from a scientific angle (at least for a layperson), and the fuses themselves—whether they are alive, like the children or birds, or inanimate like Pressia’s doll head—are almost characters in themselves, as Baggott makes clever use of them throughout this first book in, what is to be a series. It’s actually amazing how such a seemingly odd, and possibly ruinous plot point ends up “making” the story and when genetic manipulation, paramilitary groups, authoritarianism , and revolution are thrown into the mix, readers can’t help but become engrossed.
I won’t say that if you read one genre book this year, Pure is the one to read—there are too many well-written vehicles out or about to be released, but I will say, that should you choose to partake, Pure is one to give more than a second glance to.
For a bit of entertainment, check out the book trailer below.
A short time ago a few members of the Warwick's staff had the pleasure of being interviewed for a Japanese newspaper. We recently received copies of the article (there are to be two, the next coming out on March 30th) in both print and web-version. We had so much fun with this international exposure that we decided to share part one with our loyal readers. Check out the article below in Japanese, or go to this link for a translation (you must click translate in your Google tool bar, be prepared, as "lost in translation" very much applies here). We hope you have as much fun with this as we have.
第１回
サンディエゴの独立系書店・ワーウィックス（上）
ワーウィックス(Warwick's)
住所：7812 Girard Avenue La Jolla,California 92037 写真＝長田美穂
Several years ago I read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts and this incredible tale continues to be one of my favorites. After selling a thousand paperbacks, it seems many customers agree.
The author wrote the story based on his real-life experiences escaping from an Australian prison and hiding in the slums of Bombay. He joins the Indian Mafia as a counterfeiter. Lastly, he’s gunrunning to Afghanistan to support their struggle against Russia.
Shantaram is touted as fiction, but he had to be there to write such a detailed account of the prison, Standing Babas, fire racing through the slums, the wounds that forces him to become an unofficial medic, his criminal role in India, among another dozen stories.
What is not in the book is what happened afterward. Roberts was captured, jailed, and returned to Australia to finish his prison sentence. This is when he wrote this amazing tome, not once but twice. His first copy had been confiscated.
Since the book was released in 2004, Warwick's has sold 250 hardbacks and the rest in paperback. Johnny Depp has wanted to make and star in a movie version and in the works is a sequel titled The Mountain Shadow, rumored to take place in part in the Kahneri caves near Mumbai.
Shantaram.com provides links to Roberts many accomplishments. He’s been to many cities, but is unable to be in the US to the US because he’s a felon. This is despite the fact that
Shantaram means “man of God’s peace.”
All this is to say that Shantaram is a book you will want to read, if you haven’t, and will find it one of the most engrossing page-turners you’ve ever read.
I’d be interested in your comments about this, so please email me at jim@warwicks.com.
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage- Ann Patchett "Read Ann Patchett’s collection of essays as you would a stack of letters from an old friend: Carefully, tenderly, and with the nagging suspicion that the bearer of these gifts may perhaps be a better person than you are. So effortless is her writing style, it seems there is nothing between her imagination & her pen. Revealing, touching, at times hilarious, & always personal, these essays will make you feel like Ann Patchett is your best friend!"-AHD & Janet
ワーウィックスはサンディエゴ北部、ラホヤという地域にある。全米有数の高級住宅街だ。富豪として知られる共和党の大統領候補ミット・ロムニー氏も、何軒目かの家を構えている。海岸からすこし離れた高級ブティックが並ぶ一角に同店は位置している。
およそ2万5000タイトルの書籍が揃えられている。壁際で、客と話し込んでいる店員がいた。ジョンだ。店の
長田氏は1967年奈良県生まれ。東京外国語大学を卒業後、日本経済新聞社に入社。99年に退社し、2010年秋よりシアトル在住。著書に『ガサコ伝説「百恵の時代」の仕掛人』（新潮社）、『問題少女―生と死のボーダーラインで揺れた』（ＰＨＰ研究所）がある。
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